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Comment by readhn | Hacker News Reader

its impossible to predict when FB will die (most companies die). its like timing a market top, we know its coming but getting exact timing is hard.

just some anecdotal facts: i know lots of my friends (mid age working professionals) realize that FB is a waste of time and if anything try to avoid it more and more. its just a matter of time before other platform takes over.

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When there's lots of people on your FB, it's mostly noise and very little signal. When there's few (as mine is now), you realize there's still very little signal. I could never get over the fact that, IMO, broadcasting on a social network isn't meaningful. This is the main reason why I really like dedicated one-on-one messaging (ex, WhatsApp) but pretty much find FB proper useless in 9/10 cases (Events being the only nice aspect). That being said, I hold out little hope that FB will finally die.

I unfollowed most people and started liking things. My feed turned into a sort of ghetto Google Reader... but they always tweak it to meet Facebooks objectives.

To be honest, the only content left is the mommy swap pages. Fancy Craigslist. :)

The signal fell off a cliff: when I used it 10 years ago in uni, it was actually useful (and the algorithm did a better job of showing things you wanted to see/there were less ads of all types); now it's mostly a proxy for emails about parties and spotify/hulu/tinder login.

I think Facebook has failed to notice the precipitous drop, because they can only A/B test small changes, and none of the thousand cuts seemed like much damage.

Now they lack the magic to get new users hooked, are transparently a psychologically-manipulative ad-network, and are wondering why engagement is dropping or young users are finding new platforms.

I call it stats blindness: you optimize for a proxy, and end up walking slowly downhill.

I never used Facebook until I ended up as secretary of a sports club. It adds a lot of value for messages such as, "Could someone who regularly drives past the bottle shop please pick up a carton of beer and drop it off next time they come to the club rooms?" If you post that on Facebook, people read it a lot sooner than if it's on some group-specific message board. Then, whoever offers to do it gets to have the whole club see them volunteer.

If you're trying to organise a community instead of just making money from its economy, then a semi-public space like Usenet or Facebook turns out to be really useful.

They realize, stop using it for a few weeks/months, starts missing it and then come back again. I myself have gone through a few such cycles. This is frustratingly similar to trying to quit an addiction.

I see a lot of it too .. the fact that a lot of people want to stop using it is telling us whats coming for the company..

True, but I'm envious that my startup isn't in a situation where people were trying to quit it.

I went through several cycles like that. But somehow I stopped using Facebook in 2013. I managed to shift the mindset from "it's a waste of time" to "it's very shameful to use facebook" (and maybe connect it with some really shameful thing in your mind, like, "using Facebook is the same as stealing an old man's money") and that magically works! And it doesn't require any iron will for me.

After that, every single time I think about using Facebook the shame engine in my mind generates enough repel force for me to not do it.

I didn't do that whole process intensionally. I remember seeing some meme like "checking out Facebook in the summer -- all my friends are having fun somewhere and me masturbating lonely in a dark room" and that initiated the mindset change.

To be honest, I know using Facebook is NOT a shame, but now I don't have any reason to use it at all. (There are some stupid website which only allows Facebook login, and I use my gf's account for it -- neither I nor her care about what's on her facebook.)

One trick that worked for me is to gradually subscribe and like boring stuff like cat pictures, scientific journals ect. Anything that doesn't rile you mentally, i.e low mental imprint. Do this very very slowing but consciously after a while your facebook feed would become 'boring' making it easier to quit.

I did this couple of years ago and never went back.

Unless you're looking to wear your non-facebook status as a badge of pride (which many do), I think there's a more constructive way to quit wasting time on FB.

Every time you see a vapid post, unsubscribe from whoever posted it. Eventually you'll have five minutes worth of feed every day and it's only people you're interested in. Suddenly you're not wasting time, you're just getting a couple friend and family updates with your morning coffee.

More radically, you can try this chrome extension. I've been using it for a couple of weeks now and it drastically cut my use of facebook.

Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat...

i use that now but it's hard for an addict to install that .

What I did was to simply log out from Facebook.

I would impulsively type the URL and then the small nuisance of having to log in was enough for me to close the tab. After a few days it was enough to stop the compulsion, and now I haven't used Facebook in months.

Reddit on the other hand...

I even deactivate FB. Isn't enough to keep me out for long.

It's true that most companies die, if you include every tiny startup and shop. I don't think it's necessarily true if you look at companies that are the size of Facebook.

There are a lot of very, very old companies in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies

Kongō Gumi is a Japanese construction company that was started in 578 AD, and operated for over 1,400 years until it was bought in 2006.

If Facebook lasts as long as Kongō Gumi, they'll still be around in the year 3432.

Well, LiveJournal and MySpace are still around, as is AOL. But I think the big question is when Facebook will stop being the "it" page, and I'm guessing sooner rather than later. A lot of people already seem to be rather sick of it, and would jump on a halfway decent alternative if it arose (and targeted a community, rather than just being a "Facebook alternative").

Do you think those people are sick of Facebook or sick of the "connected lifestyle". For me it's the latter, especially when you hear "what, your not on Facebook?"

I've heard people be suspicious of other people that didn't have an online presence. Especially if they were working in tech. It's just so weird sometimes.

I guess it depends on what you mean by the "connected lifestyle." A focus on rapid-fire micro-updates sent out to a general audience instead of a more personalized and thought out conversation? I think there are a number of people tired of that. But alternatives don't have to follow this model. They could be based around longer, more thought out and more personalized correspondence (like e-mail), or on developing real world communities (like Meetup).

I think Slack is a good example of this. What it's doing is possible on other platforms, but it's better at what it does and so it's attracting a lot of attention. Eventually some site like that is going to attract enough people who start using it as there primary online interpersonal interaction page, and let their presence on other sites stagnate. At which point other people will start navigating to the platform simply because that's where everyone's going, and you'll get a snowball effect.

Like with a lot of things, once it gets started it will probably happen very rapidly.

The alternative may be putting down the phones and computers and talking to people face to face again. Said as I stare at my phone on the bus with most other people doing the same.

But... Is using a phone on the bus a problem?

Buses (to many people) are a place better off without a lot of conversations going on. That used to mean books or staring out the window. Phones seem to offer a legitimate improvement here.

Now, if you're talking about somewhere like bars, that might be different. But I mostly see face-in-phone on buses, and people talking at bars. (YMMV, anecdata, etc.)

> A lot of people already seem to be rather sick of it

I suspect any issues they have with Facebook would be had for any of its alternatives.

Unless that alternative is radically different, like in-person conversation.

Zuckerborg is going to keep this thing around at least another 10 years. I mean I am skeptical of Zuck. But he's got some sort of management genius. So much so that I think it's not a bad idea to elect him President in 10 years.

While I agree he's likely looking into the possibility of a political career, I'm not sure anyone will be elected President in 10 years.

Please explain.

there isn't a presidential election in 10 years.

4 year election cycles, so 10 years from now would be just after midterm elections.

For starters, there's no (planned) presidential election in 10 years. There's one in 4 years, 8 years, and 12 years

But he might be making a prediction/silly joke that Trump will destroy the US or something.

This last presidential race more or less started 2 years ago. If he were to run for President for the election in 12 years, he'd more or less start running in 10.

No I was just going by Zuck's age.

He's 32 years old, and the President has to be at least 35 years old. So he could run in 4 years.

I would not want a 35 year old Zuck as President.

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